First two days of French 1

I was super inspired by watching Blaine Ray use himself to really drill into the kids the difference between  you and I, so I started with Je m'appelle and Tu t'appelles this week.  It was REALLY hard for me to stay on those two structures alone for over 15 minutes....but I did it!  And then all I added was Il/elle s'appelle and we were able to go 30 more minutes!!!  Oh my gosh...  This is an example of how it went.  I picked one student to start with:  one hour I chose brilliantly (now that I look back on it) and picked a kid who was confused super easily.  It forced me to slow down and really repeat everything for that one kid (offering tons more reps for the other kids).  My other hour, I was scared to pick a beginner, so I picked someone I knew could answer easily.  Why did I do that???  It just made the other kids feel bad that they weren't as good as she is (she took a semester of French 1 last year, but didn't finish the credit, so she's back with me).  Okay, here's my "script."  I'll use what happened with my first kid to show how I tried to make him feel successful despite him feeling like he wasn't "getting it"

Me: Bonjour!
Kid: What?
Me: Bonjour!
Kid: Huh?
Me:  (at this point, everyone had told me that they understood the word Bonjour...so I was just training him to respond to me)  Class, what does Bonjour mean again?  And if someone said hello to you, how would you respond?
Me: Bonjour!
Kid: Hello!
Big laughs
Me: (whispering) in French
Me: Bonjour!
Kid: (lightbulb) Bonjour!
Applause
Me: Bonjour!
Kid: Bonjour! (with confidence)
Me: (walking towards the board so I could point to the structures and speaking slowly) Tu t'appelles comment?  Class, let's break that down because it's kind of weird.  What am I saying exactly? (you call yourself how)  Yeah, and that's really weird.  So how would we actually say that in English?  (what's your name)  Perfect!
Me to kid: Bonjour!
Kid: Bonjour!
Me:  (again, very slowly and pointing)  Tu t'appelles comment?
Kid: Uh....John?
Me: Oui!!!  Tu t'appelles John!!  Class, what did I just say?
Okay...lots of repetition of this...and then I finally ask John to try to say I call myself John.  He does!  So we all applaud because he's the first kid to speak a complete sentence in French!!  Then, I go around and ask other students for their names, encouraging them to use a complete sentence if they don't seem completely terrified.  Lots of high fives and cheers.  Then, back to John.
Me:  Bonjour!
Kid:  (confident...he's got this) Bonjour
Me: Tu t'appelles comment?
Kid: Je m'appelle John.
Me:  Oui!  Tu t'appelles John!  Je m'appelle John? (pause and wait for him to respond)
Kid:  Je m'appelle John.
Me:  Wait...what did I just ask there (point and translate)  Yes...is my name John?  No!  What's my name?  Okay, John...Je m'appelle John? 
Kid: No!
Me:  Oui! Je m'appelle Madame Hayles!  Tu t'appelles Madame Hayles?
Kid:  Oui!
Me:  Pause!  John....(pointing to the structures on the board)  Tu t'appelles Madame Hayles?
Kid:  Wait...I'm confused!
Me:  Thank you for stopping me!!!  Let's break it down in English.  Tu t'appelles....(You call yourself...)  Madame Hayles?
Kid:  (lightbulb)  Oh!!   No!!!  Je m'appelle John.
Continue with this type of interaction with other kids until it seems like they are all starting to hear the difference between Tu and Je easily.
Then I added il s'appelle and we circled that.  I asked questions like "Je m'appelle John ou il s'appelle John?"
Circled the crap out of those three.  At the end of class, my word clicker person said that we had said Je m'appelle 95 times in the 20-30 minutes.  And the kids said that it didn't seem repetitive to them and they wanted to do more of "that stuff" next week because they felt like they didn't quite have it yet.

It was awesome!  Thank you so much to Blaine for modelling the Tu vs Je questions and thank you to Bryce Hedstrom for reminding me to interview my kids instead of just making up fiction about them based on one of their interests. 

Now, if only I can keep this up all year!